A History of Women in the Coast Guard
by John A. Tilley
Women have been performing Coast Guard duties longer
than there has been a Coast Guard. At least one professional ancestor of the
modern female Coast Guardsman predated the federal government itself. In
1776, John Thomas joined the Army to fight in the Revolutionary War. His
wife, Hannah, took over his job as keeper of Gurnet Point Light, near
The oldest root of the modern Coast Guard's institutional family tree can be
traced back to Aug. 7, 1789, when the new Congress appropriated funds for
"the necessary support, maintenance and repairs of all lighthouses,
beacons, buoys and public piers ... within any bay, inlet, harbor, or port
of the
Along with the position of keeper went a house, usually built into the base
of the light tower, and a plot of land on which the keeper's family was
expected to keep livestock and grow vegetables. The position of keeper did
not require much education, training, or mechanical skill; it demanded
dedication, stamina, patience, and a willingness to work for a low salary.
It was just the sort of job, in the social atmosphere of Victorian America,
for a woman.
There seems to have been no official policy regarding the hiring of women to
work at lighthouses. The early records are skimpy, but two modern
researchers, Mary Louise Clifford and J. Candace Clifford, found the names
of 138 women who were employed as lighthouse keepers between 1828 and 1947.
The majority were the wives or daughters of keepers or other Lighthouse
Board employees who died on the job.
'Sturdy little women'
Mary Reynolds became keeper of the lighthouse at
In 1881, Navy CAPT Charles McDougal drowned in a storm off the coast of
The loneliness and independence of life at a lighthouse exerted an odd
attraction to some people. John Walker and his German immigrant wife, Kate,
were appointed keeper and assistant keeper of Robbins Reef Light, off
In the early 20th Century the number of female lighthouse keepers declined
steadily. Steam-driven foghorns replaced the old fog bells, and oil lamps
gave way to electric lights. A 1948 issue of The Coast Guard Bulletin
commented that these technological improvements had "placed the duties
of keepers of lighthouses beyond the capacity of most women." The last
of the woman lighthouse keepers apparently was Fannie Salter, who lived at
Turkey Point Light, Md., from 1925 to 1947.
'The best clerical assistance'
The Coast Guard was created Jan. 28, 1915, when
President Woodrow Wilson signed a congressional law consolidating the
Revenue Cutter Service and the Life Saving Service. The new service was to
operate under the Department of the Treasury during peacetime, and to be
absorbed by the Navy upon declaration of war. A little more than two years
later, the latter provision was put into effect when the
American society in the early 20th Century saw three spheres of the
professional world as proper domains for women: the school, the office, and
the hospital. During World War I the
"Enroll women in the Naval Reserve as yeomen," said Secretary of
the Navy Josephus Daniels, "and we will have the best clerical
assistance the country can provide." On March 19, 1917, the Navy
authorized the enlistment of women in the Naval Reserve, with the rating
"Yeoman (F)" and the popular label "Yeomanettes."
The Navy's policy was extended to the Coast Guard, but personnel records
from World War I contain scarcely any references to the Coast Guard
Yeomanettes. A handful of them apparently were employed at the diminutive
Coast Guard headquarters building in
With the war's end the Coast Guard Yeomanettes, along with their Navy and
Marine Corps counterparts, were mustered out of the service. Daniels bade
them farewell: "As we embrace you in uniform today, we will embrace you
without uniform tomorrow."
'Make a date with Uncle Sam'
During World War II more than 16 million men joined
the armed forces - while the country's industrial and agricultural
production had to increase. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, noting the examples
provided early in the war by
On Nov. 23, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Public Law 772 of the
77th Congress, 2nd Session, creating the Women's Reserve of the Coast Guard.
The purpose of the act was, "to expedite the war effort by providing
for releasing officers and men for duty at sea and their replacement by
women in the shore establishment of the Coast Guard, and for other
purposes." The Women's Reserve was to be modeled on the one the Navy
had created a few months earlier. Two Navy restrictions were carried over to
the Coast Guard. Women were not to serve outside the continental
The armed forces, never having confronted the prospect of organizing a large
contingent of young women, sought help from the academic community. Navy LT
Dorothy Stratton, former dean of women at
An informal proposal to call the Coast Guard women WARCOGS was mercifully
abandoned. Stratton suggested that the Women's Reserve be known by an
acronym based on the Coast Guard motto: "Semper Paratus - Always
Ready." By early 1943 the WAAC and WAVE recruiting posters on
post-office walls and telephone poles were joined by placards urging women
to "Make a Date With Uncle Sam" and "Enlist in the Coast
Guard SPARs."
Recruiting for the SPARs
The initial estimate was that the Coast Guard would
need 8,000 enlisted women and 400 women officers, with a recruiting target
of 500 enlisted and 25 officers per month. Applicants had to be between 20
and 36 years old (the upper limit for officers was 50) and have no children
under the age of 18. Enlisted women had to have completed two years of high
school and officers two years of college. "Married women 'may enlist
provided their husbands are not in the Coast Guard. Unmarried women must
agree not to marry until after they have finished their period of training.
After training, a SPAR may marry a civilian or a serviceman who is not in
the Coast Guard.'" A SPAR who became pregnant "must submit her
resignation promptly."
The first 153 enlisted SPARs and 15 SPAR officers were former WAVEs who
agreed to be discharged from the Navy and join the Coast Guard. Several of
them were assigned as recruiters and dispatched throughout the country.
Recruiters were told not to sit in their offices and wait for women to walk
in, but to go out in the field to talk to prospects and their families. At
least one recruiting office took that advice literally, sending its staff on
repeated treks through the cotton fields of the South to seek out potential
SPARs. Recruiters made speeches on the stages of movie theaters. Mobile
units traveled in jeeps with "Don't Be a Spare - Be a SPAR"
painted on their vehicle's spare tires. A song-and-dance show called
"Tars and Spars" played in the cities of the East Coast.
The recruiters faced some serious obstacles, for military women were
experiencing an image problem. In 1943, a nationwide rumor mill gave rise to
public speculation about American women in uniform. One popular tale had it
that the female recruiting effort was a front for a government-sponsored
prostitution ring, the function of which was to slake the sexual appetites
of new male soldiers and sailors. Each uniformed woman supposedly was
receiving a monthly issue of prophylactics to help her accomplish her
mission. Newspaper editors and clergymen started warning parents not to sell
their daughters into slavery.
The Coast Guard constructed what it wanted the public to perceive as the
real SPAR: an attractive, wholesome, high-spirited young woman with
impeccable grooming habits, perfect teeth, and no ambition beyond serving
her country, "releasing a man to fight at sea," and getting
married - preferably after the war.
The SPARs adopted a slightly modified version of the WAVE uniform, which had
been designed by Mainbocher of New York, a women's fashion firm. Newspapers
and magazines were bombarded with glossy prints of SPARs smiling as they
marched in formation, smiling over steaming pots, smiling at assorted
vehicles, and smiling at male Coast Guardsmen. One managed to look as though
she was smiling while blowing a bugle. There is almost no such thing as a
casual photograph of a World War II SPAR.
SPAR Training
To train the new recruits the Coast Guard again relied
on assistance from academe. The first enlisted SPARs were former WAVEs who
had received their basic training at
In the middle of 1943, the Coast Guard set up its own indoctrination
facility in what had been the Biltmore Hotel in
After graduation, the new SPARs were ordered to various specialized schools
throughout the country where they received the same training as their male
counterparts. Late in the war, as the SPAR recruiting effort met its quota
and the number of new recruits diminished, the Palm Beach facility shut down
and newly-enlisted women were trained alongside enlisted men at the Coast
Guard training facility in Manhattan Beach, N.Y.
Enlisted men were assigned specialties when they enlisted, but the service's
initial policy was to give all enlisted SPARs the rating of seaman second
class. It was assumed that a woman could not bring any useful civilian
skills (other than typing or working a telephone switchboard) into the
military. Then a former policewoman demonstrated in boot camp that she knew
how to shoot, and a former professional photographer suggested that she
could qualify as a photographer's mate. The policy changed, and by the end
of the war SPARs held 43 different ratings from boatswain's mate to yeoman.
The first 200 SPAR officers were trained at a Navy facility on the campus of
Smith College, a women's school in Northampton, Mass. The Coast Guard
realized, however, that it needed an indoctrination facility for its own
female officers. On June 28, 1943, the Coast Guard Academy, New London,
Conn., opened its doors to women when a class of 50 SPAR officer candidates
reported for indoctrination. SPAR officers, like male reserve officers, went
through a streamlined program crammed into six weeks (later lengthened to
eight) that bore little resemblance to the academy's peacetime curriculum.
But, in using its service academy to train women, the Coast Guard was taking
a step that none of the other armed services emulated. More than 700 of the
955 SPAR officers commissioned during the war received their training at New
London.
'I don't suppose you could take a letter'
The largest single employer of SPARs was headquarters,
located in the former (and, according to rumor, condemned) Southern Railway
Building at 1300 E Street in Washington. As the war went on, most of the
clerical work in the eight-story structure came to be done by SPARs and
female civilian employees.
Wartime Washington was hard pressed to find room for all the military women
and civilian "government girls" who were crowding into the city.
They were jammed into every building the government could locate that would
accommodate a few bunks. SPAR Betty Splaine recalled how fortunate she felt
when she and three other SPARs, after stints in an insect-infested rooming
house and the Plaza Hotel, were quartered in a dean's office at American
University. "It had wall-to-wall carpeting, and we got individual solid
maple beds rather than iron bunk beds," she said.
Eventually the SPARs moved into a row of temporary barracks, named after
Coast Guard cutters, on Independence Avenue. ADM Russell Waesche, then
commandant, was an early convert to the cause of the SPARs. Stratton
asserted afterward that "the thing that made the SPARs successful was
the support of the commandant." Not every male Coast Guardsman showed
the same inclination. When Splaine reported for duty at headquarters her
officer in charge gave her a look of utter disgust and assigned her to a
desk behind his so he would not have to look at a woman in uniform. He
practically ignored her until one day when his civilian secretary called in
sick. The officer turned to the SPAR and said, "I don't suppose you
could take a letter." She, in fact, could take shorthand faster than he
could dictate, and soon was doing most of the clerical work in the office.
The secret specialty
Late in 1942 the Coast Guard began setting up a new,
highly confidential electronic navigation system called loran. Reports from
the British Royal Air Force, whose female radar operators had helped win the
Battle of Britain, probably were instrumental in convincing the Coast Guard
that a loran station would be an appropriate billet for SPARs.
In the summer of 1943, LTJG Vera Hamerschlag took command of the Chatham,
Mass., loran monitoring station, which consisted of a 30- by 50-foot,
one-story building and a 125-foot tower on the beach at Cape Cod. The 11
SPARs under Hamerschlag's command had responsibility for ascertaining and
maintaining the accuracy of transmissions from several other loran stations
on the East Coast. The duty involved monitoring and recording those
transmissions every two minutes, 24 hours a day. The SPARs were told not to
"even think loran," and never to give anyone in or out of the
service any hint of what was happening inside the mysterious building.
The policy of denying women authority over men inevitably created practical
problems, particularly when female officers were assigned to stations that
had male Coast Guardsmen on staff. The Coast Guard eventually got around the
difficulty by means of an opinion from the judge advocate general's office
dated November 1943. The JAG concluded that the prohibition applied
"only to authority which pertains to command," and that "the
authority of a subordinate officer as a representative of the officer in
command has full legal effect in the execution of his regulations,
instructions, and policies. The fact that the subordinate is a member of the
Women's Reserve does not alter the effect."
In other words, a SPAR could give orders to a male Coast Guardsman so long
as her commanding officer was a man. The logic behind the new policy was
rather convoluted, but it put SPAR officers a step ahead of their
counterparts in the other services.
On Sept. 27, 1944, Congress revised the law prohibiting WAVEs and SPARs from
serving outside the continental United States. Henceforth, SPARs with good
records who requested such duty could be stationed in American overseas
territories. The war in Europe was almost over by this time, but about 200
SPARs were sent to Alaska and 200 more to Hawaii before VJ Day.
In October 1944, the secretary of the Navy ordered the WAVEs and SPARs to
begin accepting black recruits. The first black SPAR was YN3 Olivia Hooker.
By then the SPARs' initial recruiting goals almost had been achieved, and
the service had stopped accepting civilian women for officer training.
A few black women enlistees did go through OCS and were commissioned as
ensigns before the end of the war. Personnel records do not indicate the
total number of black SPARs who enlisted in the three months before the
recruiting effort began shutting down.
End of the SPARs
The SPARs had enlisted for "duration plus
six" - the length of the war plus six months. SPAR recruiting virtually
ended in December 1944. Shortly after the surrender of Japan, the women's
reserve branches of all the services were disbanded, and the SPARs
officially ceased to exist (though the label was still being applied
informally to female Coast Guardsmen in the 1960s). A few SPARs were allowed
to remain on active duty long enough to finish the projects on which they
were working; the remaining 12,000 returned to civilian life. Stratton, who
had attained the rank of captain, became director of personnel for the
International Monetary Fund, and later would serve 10 years as national
executive director of the Girl Scouts.
During the next few years many Women's Reserve records were destroyed, and
the federal government seems largely to have forgotten about the SPARs. But
the SPARs never forgot the years they had spent in uniform. Dorothy Gleason,
who enlisted in 1943 and had just been commissioned an ensign when she was
demobilized, recalls the pride she and her fellow SPARs felt at having
played "an active part at a crucial time in our country's history ...
we were the pathfinders; we ended up doing many things because we showed we
could," she said.
Doldrums in the '50s and '60s
The Women's Armed Services Act of 1948 integrated
women into the regular Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force. The
legislation did not mention the Coast Guard, probably because that service
was run by the Department of the Treasury rather than the Department of
Defense.
The Korean conflict of 1950 to 1953 saw a brief expansion of the armed
forces, as reservists were called to active duty and retired members were
invited to reenlist. The Coast Guard made no systematic effort to mobilize
the former SPARs of World War II, largely because it had made no effort to
keep up with their name and address changes. About 200 former SPARs
voluntarily reenlisted in the early '50s, but most left when the military
effort in Korea wound down. By 1956 there were nine enlisted women and 12
female officers in the Coast Guard, and The Coast Guard Magazine reported
that "your chances of seeing a SPAR on active duty today have a slight
edge over the possibilities of your running into Greta Garbo at the corner
drugstore."
Though the Women's Reserve continued to exist as a separate entity on paper,
the Coast Guard of the 1950s had scarcely any recognizable policy regarding
women. In 1950 Eleanor L'Ecuyer, a former SPAR who had graduated from law
school after World War II, responded to an announcement that the Coast Guard
was offering commissions to former reservists who had done additional work
in college. She was appointed an ensign - and was thereupon "placed in
limbo" because the service had no billet for her. (L'Ecuyer joined a
reserve unit and eventually was called to active duty, becoming, in her
words, "probably the only officer, male or female, who never had a day
of OCS training.)"
Splaine passed the warrant officer qualification test in 1957, only to be
told that she would "have to go home" because "we've never
had a woman WO before." It took her eight months of arguments to get
her commission.
In the 1960s individual reserve units did their own recruiting, and
businessmen who held reserve officers' commissions sometimes talked their
secretaries into enlisting. But the Vietnam War gave the Coast Guard a
surplus of qualified male applicants, and the service made little systematic
effort to attract women. [Although there were four SPARs on duty as Corpsmen
in the Dispensary at Governors Island through at least 1966-1968.]
In the early 1970s, with ADM Chester Bender as commandant, the Coast Guard
came to the forefront of American military policy regarding women. All the
armed services were adjusting to several important national phenomena: civil
rights legislation, the end of the Vietnam War, and the women's movement.
The Army, Navy and Air Force wrung their hands and held back the tide as
long as they could. The Coast Guard, though not without reluctance, accepted
it.
A congressional law, passed in 1973, ended the Women's Reserve as a separate
entity. Henceforth women would be eligible for active duty in both the
regular Coast Guard and the reserve, in which men and women were to serve
side by side. In the same year the service opened its officer candidate
program to women, thereby becoming the first American armed service to do
so.
New London goes coed
On Oct. 7, 1975, President Gerald Ford signed an Act
of Congress requiring that the armed services admit women to their service
academies the following year. The academy, to the accompaniment of
despairing howls from some of its alumni, had already announced that it
would accept female applicants for the class entering in July 1976. Female
cadets would receive the same training as males - including summer cruises
aboard the training barque Eagle, which had a compartment designated
"Woman Cadet Quarters" added to its lower deck.
The first-generation female academy graduates tell diverse stories about
their experience. Some describe the academy as a "bastion of male
chauvinism" in which sexism lurked just below the surface in every
realm from athletics to uniform design. A female instructor describes a
survey that was taken among female cadets in the early '80s, when several
new uniform options were being considered. The majority of fourth-classmen
preferred a style that looked decidedly feminine, whereas the
first-classmen, having concluded, the instructor suggests, that "the
way to get ahead was to look like a man," opted for a uniform that
differed only slightly from the men's. Other female cadets assert just as
emphatically that the only women who found sexual discrimination were those
who looked for it. The key to success at the academy, says one successful
graduate, was "not to get wrapped up in being a female Coastie. Just be
a Coastie."
Sea duty at last
In the spring of 1977, under the urging of Secretary
of Transportation Brock Adams, the Coast Guard decided to conduct an
experiment by assigning women to sea-going ships. The high-endurance CGCs
Morgenthau and Gallatin were selected to receive 10 enlisted women and two
female officers each.
The concept initially got a cool reception aboard the vessels in question.
Legend had it that the Morgenthau's radio call sign, NDWA, meant "no
damn women aboard." The crews of the two cutters were put through
extensive briefings regarding the conduct that was expected of them, and
their families received a newsletter detailing the arrangements that would
be made to accommodate the "mixed crews." Some of the most vocal
opposition to women's presence aboard ships came from the sailors' wives.
Women reported for duty aboard the Morgenthau and Gallatin late in 1977, to
the accompaniment of considerable media attention and a couple of seamen
commenting "there goes the neighborhood." Those who expected the
two cutters to either sink or turn into nautical dens of iniquity were
disappointed. As had been the case when the Coast Guard set up its first
racially integrated ships' companies during World War II, the "mixed
crews" quietly settled into a working routine and went about their
business with little if any commotion.
CAPT Alan Breed, commanding officer of the Gallatin, acknowledged a year
later that some of his male crewmembers had experienced "apprehensions,
reservations, concerns, and, in some cases, frustrations" when they
were told that women would be joining the ship, but he asserted that
"there have been no major problems to date ... . Today, I doubt that
there are over two or three who retain such hardcore opposition."
In sending women to sea the Coast Guard was steering toward a collision with
the Navy. By congressional law the Coast Guard is transferred from DOT to
the Department of the Navy in wartime, and the high-endurance cutters were
designed for double duty as anti-submarine warships. Navy policy, based on
the long-standing congressional law banning women from combat, excluded
women from most seagoing billets. For a few years the Coast Guard maintained
a contingency plan to replace each seagoing woman with a man upon transfer
of the Coast Guard to the Navy. The Navy's "no sea duty for women"
rule, however, was negated in 1978 by the Owens vs. Brown federal court
decision, and the plans to remove women from Coast Guard cutters in wartime
were eventually scrapped.
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of Chanel No. 5
On April 1, 1979, LTJG Beverly Kelley, who had been
part of the Morgenthau experiment, took command of the CGC Cape Newagen, a
95-foot patrol boat operating out of Maui, Hawaii. Kelley, who came from a
seagoing family (her father was a captain in the merchant service),
emphasizes today that she got the command "through natural
progression," but she immediately became a media celebrity.
The announcement that a woman had taken command of a United States ship of
war spawned newspaper headlines ranging from "Female skipper likes
Coast Guard challenge" to "Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of Chanel No.
5."
Kelley, who now holds the rank of commander, recalls that the biggest
challenge she confronted came from the media. The Cape Newagen's 14-man crew
adjusted relatively painlessly to the fact that their CO was a woman (though
several remarked that the female voice on the PA system sounded
"strange"), and the cutter, once the media attention died down,
carried out its duties in exemplary fashion. The Cape Newagen received a
Meritorious Unit Commendation for its search-and-rescue work during a major
Pacific storm in 1980.
In 1979, RADM William Steward, then chief of personnel for the Coast Guard,
testified before a House of Representatives subcommittee reviewing the
Defense Department's policies regarding women. When asked about the Coast
Guard's experience with women aboard ships, Steward replied,
"There are times when obviously a 200-pound pump may not be able to be
lifted by women; however, that same pump may not be able to be lifted by all
of the male population of a particular unit as well. We have exposed the
women to the gamut of our missions: law enforcement; marine environmental
protection; aids to navigation; all of the other missions that we have. I
can categorically state, sir, that their performance has been
outstanding."
During the next few years women were assigned virtually every duty to which
their ranks entitled them. In 1983, LCDR Melissa Wall, then a LTJG, took
command of Loran Station St. Paul, Alaska, with a complement of 26 - all
males - serving under her. By 1983, of 129 women officers in the Coast
Guard, 35 were serving aboard seagoing vessels and five were aircraft
pilots. Female enlisted strength in the same year stood at 1,747, including
85 enlisted women at sea.
By the late 1970s, the course the Coast Guard had charted was clear: women
were in the service to stay. Official distinctions between men and women
dropped away one by one. The practice of discharging pregnant females was
abandoned, and the Hollywood costume designer Edith Head provided a female
version of the new "Bender Blues" uniform.
Coast Guard women continued, however, to encounter discrimination in more
subtle forms.
"I'm not sure I really want sea duty," said a reserve officer.
"If the men hear that I'm having dinner with the captain, they think
I'm bucking for promotion. If I have dinner with the exec (executive
officer), I'm asking for favoritism. If I hang out with the enlisted men I
must be giving it away cheap, and if I stick with the other women I must be
a lesbian."
Coast Guard women in the '90s
Coast Guard women still make headlines whether they
want to or not. When LT Sandra Stosz took command of the icebreaking tug
LCDR June Ryan, formerly an enlisted woman who is now military aide to
President Clinton, recalls that when she took command of the icebreaker
Wall, now executive officer of the 210-foot CGC Courageous, expresses a
similar view. "I'm no longer a 'female officer;' now people just say,
'okay, she's an officer,'" she said.
Coast Guard women acknowledge that a gender gap still exists in the service,
but many of them see that gap as no wider than the one that exists in
civilian life. "It's okay for guys to have wives on the pier waving
goodbye," said Wall, "but it doesn't work the other way
around."
BMCS Diane Bucci, who became the first enlisted woman to command afloat when
she became officer in charge of the tug CGC Capstan in 1988, says she has
noticed a subtle but significant change in the relationship between Coast
Guard men and women in the past decade.
"Being 'one of the guys' used to be the key," she said. "You
had to not only listen to the dirty jokes but tell them. That's not so any
more."
A 1990 study entitled "Women in the Coast Guard" led to a
systematic effort to identify gender-related concerns and problems. The
Coast Guard now has a Women's Advisory Council consisting of nine officers
and senior enlisted women who advise senior officers and civilian
administrators on policy matters. The Defense Advisory Committee on Women in
the Services, or DACOWITS, addresses the concerns of the Coast Guard as well
as DOD's.
The Care of Newborn Child Program gives new mothers and fathers the option
of taking a year off with the assurance of retaining their ranks and ratings
when they return to active duty. All Coast Guardsmen watch films designed to
define and discourage sexual harassment. Friction continues to exist between
genders, but most Coast Guardsmen have found that creating the diverse
environment called for by the regulations isn't as hard as they expected.
Bucci recalls that when she reported aboard her first ship, she ran into an
enlisted man who had the right idea.
"He just shook hands and said, 'we're glad you're here,'" she
said.
International events of the '90s have put the military's new policies toward
women to the test. Three reserve port-security units, all with women among
their members, were sent to the
The women consulted during the preparation of this article were unanimous in
their assertion that the Coast Guard is ahead of the other armed services in
its policies toward and treatment of women. Another consistent theme among
Coast Guard women is an intense dedication to their profession. Splaine, who
retired in 1971 as a CWO4 after a career of 28 years, summarized her
attitude toward the Coast Guard: "I love it, love it, love it, love it,
love it."